A World a Week: Many Worlds This Time

This is the Lands

 
So this is a gathering of differing spots that I have been running in with my players, but haven't really tried to to tie it together for them. They're no even certain if they want would want me to. But from Gonzop to Zark (which is actually called "Zarka"by those that know how to read maps, or just read in general) , it is about 3/4's of a hemisphere of an Earth-sized planet. The East-to-West of this map is a curving line that comes the upper left corner of the page and somewhere just above lower right corner. True north is somewhere along the left edge around the 2/3 page down part.

Gonzop in the farther eastern areas of the Lands, as they are referred to as, while Gonzop and its neighbors are in the west. Somewhere in the Graptak wastes is the Western Pole where even fairies are frightened about the things that live there. In the frosty oceans of the north near the coastlines of Greater Barbaria is the North Pole, which we'd recognize from our own world, except for maybe all the frost giants and Santa Claus being there.

Meanwhile the distance from the tip of Forestia the southern part of Zark is about from Maine to Colombia. Since December, distances have come to the forefront of my mind. Well they always have been. Even in Eighth grade in my most "American" of years as a kid, I new that the distance from Berlin to Moscow was the same as Detroit to Washington DC. I also always got that Maine was closer to Morocco than Florida, hence the curves that I put this map into. I have been traveling a whole lot this year beyond the tank of gas range that most of us the road-trippers do, while not sky-hopping from one specific locale to another but seeing only ninety miles of any place and only briefly at that like the jet-set is prone to do. Travel in my Lands is felt, even when the PCs get to sky-hop. 

Now humans are not really humans. They are clones of humans from our own world. Even when they make babies the natural way, something, let's call them nanobots, implant memories that the Player-Characters' players have. But as we're learning today algorithms for artificial intelligence are rather dumb, so the memories aren't perfect by any means. A guy might've been an architect, but he thinks that he is good at airline piloting because of a nanobot confusing building capacity with boarding gates which he designed. And that is on top of whatever the player really knows in life.

For the not "fish out of water" trope, I have various kin, that's races for you D&D-heds, for those that really want to do some role-playing.

There is the Nimby, Imby, and Bagger, which you all have heard about over the past couple of years. Nimbys, big and tall with pouches to carry any nimby young that need carrying. They change gender characteristics over the years, from kid (androgynous) to female to male, into even grumpy old puss but androgynous once again. This way I can express and the player can think about fluid gender dynamics and the roles that people play within their society without the PC having to be lectured by folks about sexuality. Imbys get the pouch and keen senses, but are too short and cute to be anything but indigenous sorts. Baggers, they get a lot of strength and smarts but get ill and die quickly. Their four toes helps them climb with a quickness when needed. Their six-digited hands (two thumbs) give them an edge with hands-on technologies.

My favorites are the Otgan. These are the ultimate surfers. Because of their heat retaining body hair and body fat, they can live entirely in water if they must. Still they are above water air breathers, fresh water and love cooked food. Even in land, one will find them hanging out with beavers and otters more than elves.

I have about a billion Mods. Mods are mostly animal-people but they can be straight up mutated human-like species. From armadillos to zebras, I got them. Yes there is an aardvark-kin as well, but no one has ever wanted to play one or thought it was kewl when I brought one in. I have 231 outlined so far. All with spiffy names. The animal-like ones are now called Therions, thank you Thess (See Uprising at Buzzard's Gulch) . I used to just call the "fuzzies." The others tend to be called mutants. These poor beings are often discriminated against by other more dominant kin around them.

I might or might not be working in the various subgenres that I write about into the take.

An Uprising in Tunnels & Trolls

So like while I have been futzing around someone else has been busy

So this is where I have been living

 

For all of my discontent, it is actually a good thing.Thessaly Chance-Tracy, Thess (pronounced "Tess" because we're krauty), is the Tesla of T&T while I am the Lee Iacocca of indy game publishing. By "Tesla" I mean the inventor while the publication might as well be the high-end car for rich people to feel good about their contribution towards saving the planet. Meanwhile, I have an idea of what works.

Uprising At Buzzard Gulch


 
Thess's Uprising at Buzzards Gulch has been coming for a while. She has been teasing me with this work for years, eight I think. This year was the year. Not to repeat myself, but the woman keeps adding on more stuff even after I've divided it in multiple parts.

I'd describe it as the spaghetti western take on Ken St Andre's Monsters! Monsters! . There is definitely some parallels between the monsters, or "illkin" as Thess calls them, and America's ethnic minorities (like Chinese, Native Americans, socialists, and cat people to name a few). Basing the heart of the things in a reservation, as in the totally racist construct by the movers and shakers of the 19th Century not calling ahead for a good table, definitely makes the point. While reading it, I felt like I was watching scenes from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly complete with the Ennio Morricone soundtrack. 

Meanwhile, as a GM I couldn't help but be seduced into incorporating elements of the author's setting into my own Red Bat take on M!M!, which has been coming out as Gonzop sessions. The Two-Dragon Queen of Sprigda now has to deal with the Army of Salvation contingent of her human-heavy realms.

I suppose not only am I publisher of this work, I am a member of its fan club.

Flash Gordon and the Sphere of Death, part 1: Black Star

It's been about fifteen years since the last Flash Gordon release and whoever controls King Features Syndicate these days hasn't licensed a new release of the brand name. I , not being one to wait, decided to do my own. That is how the mini-campaign Flash Gordon and the Sphere of Death came about. So with JerryTel, Peryton, and Iron Curtis able to jump in, I got to work on my notes.



So kind of retelling the stories from the B&W serials of the 30s, the trappings of the 1980 movie, some of the mid-Aughts Sy-Fy Channel series, and everything else that I can remember; I decided to get into some heavy science fiction as well.  Remember the floating worlds and wavy clouds of the 80's movie? Well how about a Dyson sphere around a red dwarf star, that can eat planets like Pac-Man eating dots, BUT it's not that simple. The mega structure about the radius of our sun's center to the outer reaches of our Mar's orbit, has an abundance of energy to propel itself through the intergalactic void, but a lot of its energies are spent keeping the inside habitable, meaning gravity as well as well as temperature. So Mongo is limited in its ability to play Pac-Man of worlds. Indeed its first acquisiton, the smart reptile inhabited world of Lizardo, was shattered into fragments by Ming's ill-prepared science-wizards during the process. The surviving lizard-men are causing problems for the barely stable hegemony of Mingo city over the other kingdoms around it. Still the master computer TAO (Tay-Ow) is trying to help its denizens become the rulers of the universe as they find it, but a lot gets lost in translation when it deals with organic beings.

The design notes:
The players get to play whomever they want. This can mean from Flash Gordon or Ming the Merciless to a self-created persona from the N-K system or a remote part of Mongo. The catch is that the players have to be alternated between their main characters and their secondary characters for two out of the five planned sessions.
Cut-Away scenes can lead to nine different paths that are interlaced with one another leading to about forty-five differing storylines as scripted. At the same time, I am trying to allow any divergence from the narratives as scripted. I even told my players, I can this "mini-campaign" turn into a RPG setting worthy of the comic strip itself if need be.

Session 1: The Black Star
How does Mongo see things?
So Curtis was pretty set on Ming as his alternate Character. Pery was set on Klytus, the cyborg with the great voice made of oil and shiny metal parts from the 80s-take. Jerry was randomly assigned High Priest of TAO, Zogi as he had no real idea of who to play.
The session was set during Blot Time, night among the Mongo realms. Klytus was woken up by his cyborg-awareness indicating that there was a disturbance in the N-K sector among the deep space scans. A small planet, its inhabitants called it "Earth." Right around the same time, Zogi, was awakened by visions from TAO with body-wrenching spasms and cramps accompanied with visions of this new world. Ming woke up, kicked off a shark-man pool boy, and called Klytus to tell him that he was bored.

Klytus and Ming started misusing Mongo's amazing technology, which they can't even grasp, to start to "prepare" the Earth for assimilation into the Dyson sphere. Zogi, was not so sure that this was the right way to go about things. After conferring with his one-time colleague Klytus, he knew he was right.  So the Pope of Known Mongo traveled to an isolated sky-island which he had named "Dream Island," to commune with the machines that help him better understand TAO. He then learned that Earth was indeed a prize. He also knew that Ming and Klytus would destroy the Earth using their crude ways.

He discovered a deep-space exploritory vessel from Earth within five lightyears from Mongo. Using his arcane teachings and general brilliance, he captured Professor William Gordon (Colonel William Brandt Gordon of NASA) and his copilot. These petty Earthlings seem to have an insight into gravity-control far beyond the rest of their primitive planet. The Mongo Docking Bay 56, placed them and their ship in Cell 1,047 of 2,000 for inspection later.

Zogi was interrupted by a band of pirating Hawkmen who appeared and claimed the floating mountain as territory of the Sky City. They took him and his assistant, and android named Bolt, as prisoners.  Meanwhile General Kalla of the Mingo City Security Forces detected the abduction. Klytus has dispatched five war-rockets to pursue the hawkmen and their catch. She has not bothered to mention this to her Emperor Ming, who is busy playing with gravity beams on the Earth.

Peryton and me at GenCon 2005

So some discourse on current gaming patterns
So one of our players, the one playing Ming, mentioned to me, 'Sure I am gay, I can be as heterosexual as the plot demands me to be.'
"Why would I do that?" I asked in bewilderment. "King Kalla of the Shark-Men, along with his niece, General Kalla, are tried and true supporters of Ming. If I cannot provide pool-boys with fins to my Ming, why am I running roleplaying games?"
"Ming has a daughter." He said evenly.
"I don't care about your trials." I replied. "Mongo has cloning vats if need be."

I am a libertine. I want ppl to have fun while roleplaying. I will handle the high art as I am a capable GM. My players might have to stretch but I won't lecture them. I want to see where it's going as much as they so.